Taylor Swift undoubtedly has a bunch of quality, catchy songs, but it's naive to say she just got there through talent alone. Her father is a Merrill Lynch stockbroker who used his connections and wealth to have her signed to her first record label. In fact, it's hard to find many modern musicians, however talented, who don't have similar stories in their rise. It's harder and harder for, say, a Bruce Springsteen (as a person mentioned in here) son of a bus driver to crack it in the commercialised artistic world - certainly not to the mainstream level of Taylor or Ariana (daughter of a CEO) or what have you.